Maybe it's not always such a bad thing, after all, anxiety.
I got to thinking this way after last weekend's LadiesCon at the Somerville Armory, brought to you by the Ladies of Comicazi. By mid-morning, fans of comics, pop culture and artistic/crafty ventures based on those themes were already filling the place with an infectious energy. I was on hand as special emissary from the Land of Tall, Bald, Middle-Aged Men -- no, actually I was helping my daughter set up her artist's table, arrayed with unique perler and jewelry creations. Next to her, another young woman named Gillian Daniels was selling her hand-drawn comics and zines. One caught my eye: Undertow -- Grief for a Changing World. Its drawings and captions dramatized Gillian's struggle to keep her head above water, so to speak, even as the spectre of climate change -- as well as other threats -- loomed menacingly.
Yet she wasn't at home, curled in a ball. She wasn't staring at her phone, binging on presidential outrages and the latest IPCC report on summer Arctic ice melt. She was here, spreading her message. Granted, it wasn't outreach to a skeptical crowd, but it was something. Something to build on.
I got to thinking this way after last weekend's LadiesCon at the Somerville Armory, brought to you by the Ladies of Comicazi. By mid-morning, fans of comics, pop culture and artistic/crafty ventures based on those themes were already filling the place with an infectious energy. I was on hand as special emissary from the Land of Tall, Bald, Middle-Aged Men -- no, actually I was helping my daughter set up her artist's table, arrayed with unique perler and jewelry creations. Next to her, another young woman named Gillian Daniels was selling her hand-drawn comics and zines. One caught my eye: Undertow -- Grief for a Changing World. Its drawings and captions dramatized Gillian's struggle to keep her head above water, so to speak, even as the spectre of climate change -- as well as other threats -- loomed menacingly.
Yet she wasn't at home, curled in a ball. She wasn't staring at her phone, binging on presidential outrages and the latest IPCC report on summer Arctic ice melt. She was here, spreading her message. Granted, it wasn't outreach to a skeptical crowd, but it was something. Something to build on.
Also this week, 16 young people from around the world (including the famous Greta Thunberg) filed a legal complaint about climate change with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. Besides detailing the tangible negative effects of climate change on their lives, now and in the future, the petition cited psychological harm. Specifically, it referenced studies on "climate anxiety" and "habitual ecological worrying" that can “elicit dramatic reactions, such as loss of appetite, sleeplessness, and panic attacks.” Moreover: “Chronic stress from the acute and ongoing impacts of climate change may alter biological stress response systems and make growing children more at risk for developing mental health conditions later in life, such as anxiety, depression, and other clinically diagnosable disorders.”
Not good. Not what we want for our kids. So should parents downplay or even lie about climate change to their children? Delete the fear emoji from their phones and double up on the participation trophies and random high-fives?
Not good. Not what we want for our kids. So should parents downplay or even lie about climate change to their children? Delete the fear emoji from their phones and double up on the participation trophies and random high-fives?
I don't know. But I do know that it's probably too late to fool to most children once they go to school. When I was young, my mother insisted that our leaders wouldn't let a nuclear war happen, and did I really have to read those radical articles by Carl Sagan in Parade magazine? Well, nuclear Armageddon didn't occur (barely didn't, a few times), but that was a binary situation. Launch, or don't launch. Climate change is ongoing and gradual (so far -- tipping points are coming, which may greatly accelerate matters). Despite what you thought of Nixon and Brezhnev, neither wanted a nuclear exchange. Each man loved his kids. But today many of our leaders don't seem to care about climate change -- at least, not enough to do anything dramatic. So should parents soft-soap that fact, when it's so obvious and so anxiety-causing? Again, I don't know.
But I do suspect that anxiety, effectively harnessed, can be tempered into a powerful tool. The generalized anxiety that typifies young people today -- anxiety over everything from grades to social media standing to school shootings to ecological doom -- can perhaps be weaponized against adult intransigence on climate change. Maybe the free-floating stress that is seen as a generational flaw will aggregate into a means to attack a problem zooming down the pike at us, from the imperiled future to the complacent present. Maybe Greta's glare at Donald Trump, captured on video at the UN this week, is more powerful than the corpulent status quo.
Just a thought. Here's hoping.
But I do suspect that anxiety, effectively harnessed, can be tempered into a powerful tool. The generalized anxiety that typifies young people today -- anxiety over everything from grades to social media standing to school shootings to ecological doom -- can perhaps be weaponized against adult intransigence on climate change. Maybe the free-floating stress that is seen as a generational flaw will aggregate into a means to attack a problem zooming down the pike at us, from the imperiled future to the complacent present. Maybe Greta's glare at Donald Trump, captured on video at the UN this week, is more powerful than the corpulent status quo.
Just a thought. Here's hoping.
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